Rapid communications have become a critical business requirement for organizations seeking to take fast action as business opportunities arise. Generally, business groups employ different forms of statically defined lists (for example, an organization may publish lists of contacts who have responsibilities for a given customer or technical area). Another approach is to define attributes for people within the organization directory, such as skill attributes or customer-name attributes. By searching the directory, the organization's personnel find people with the desired skill or affinity.
In telephony, a hunt group involves the method of distributing phone calls from a single telephone number to a group of several phone lines. Organizations may employ a private branch exchange (PBX) to form hunt groups having a virtual phone number configured to connect to one of a set of direct phone numbers based on a desired formula or scheme (for example, a hunt group may be configured to ring the first non-busy number of a certain set of numbers). In applications such as call centers, hunt groups may be configured to make connections based on the calling user's customer record. Hunt groups provide convenience, in that they allow someone to call a single number for “computer help” or “purchasing” and not be concerned with exactly who they are calling.